If you haven’t read Tom Philpott’s excellent analysis of the possible role industrial hog production has played in the development of what is now pretty much a pandemic (we’re at level five on the pandemic alert, and the WHO keeps forgetting that we’re not there yet), albeit so far a mildish one, do it now.

If it turns out to be the case that this virus emerged out of the nightmare situation of industrial agriculture, I would expect to hear lots of calls for “regulation” of confinement meat operations, and new “safeguards.” 

But I think the emergence of a global flu pandemic (and we should remember that that’s on top of a host of other emergences, including possible links to avian influenza) should remind us that the problem we’re facing can’t be fixed by very small refinements upon a vast foolishness. 

That is, as long as we keep raising a million hogs at any given time in a comparatively small place that can’t, in itself, support them, we’re facing an endless stream of contaminations and incubations of disease.  The only possible solution is decentralization – a fundamental shift away from replacing people with oil and industrial equipment, and the re-placing of people into agriculture.

It looks like we may dodge the bullet on an incredibly destructive pandemic – with luck, this will not mutate into anything worse.  But that’s only because we got lucky.  And that’s worth remembering when people start talking about “regulation” and “safeguards.”
Sharon